S.F. billboard measure loses - others pass

SAN FRANCISCO

Pat Holleran marks her ballot at a polling place at Harvey Milk Elementary School in San Francisco.

Pat Holleran marks her ballot at a polling place at Harvey Milk Elementary School in San Francisco.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

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Pat Holleran marks her ballot at a polling place at Harvey Milk Elementary School in San Francisco.

Pat Holleran marks her ballot at a polling place at Harvey Milk Elementary School in San Francisco.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

S.F. billboard measure loses - others pass

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San Francisco voters defeated a measure to allow general advertising signs and billboards along mid-Market Street in the hopes of transforming the beleaguered neighborhood.

Proposition D - the most controversial measure on an uncharacteristically short, dull San Francisco ballot - would have allowed the signs on Market Street between Fifth and Seventh streets, and a percentage of the proceeds would have been used to fund youth cultural and arts education and to build a ticket booth at Hallidie Plaza.

Supporters said the signs would provide a spark to a downtrodden neighborhood. But opponents said the notion that big, unattractive signs could do what decades of City Hall plans haven't done is ridiculous.

"We always thought it would be very close," David Addington, owner of the Warfield Building, who's been pushing Prop. D said Tuesday night. "Signs are a very divisive and scary issue for San Franciscans."

Fifty-four percent of city voters rejected the measure. Just 15.4 percent of the city's 452,000 registered voters cast ballots in the election.

Another measure drawing some attention was Proposition C, to repeal a voter-approved 2004 proposition requiring the 49ers football stadium to be named Candlestick Park. Voters overwhelmingly approved the measure Tuesday.

It will allow the selling of stadium naming rights, with 50 percent of the proceeds received by the city going to fund directors at city recreation centers.

City voters also approved by a wide margin Proposition A, to establish a two-year budget cycle and require the city to create a five-year financial plan. They also approved Proposition B to eliminate the charter requirement that supervisors have two aides, and instead set their staffing like other departments do according to the city budget.

Proposition E - to prohibit an increase in general advertising signs on bus shelters, benches and other "street furniture" - also passed.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Treasurer Jose Cisneros easily won Tuesday; neither had any competition in their bids for re-election.